How did you get past NuKirk's rise to command?

[Timewalker]

It should be remembered that "nepotism" of some sort is how Starfleet has always operated. In TOS, it was stated a couple of times that sponsorship by a serving officer was important in getting Kirk or some other hopeful into Starfleet in the first place; STXI showed Starfleet happening to Kirk thanks to Pike, ST:ID told this had happened to Pike thanks to Marcus.

How could it not follow that the mentors or godfathers of the young officers would favor and favoritize their proteges? It would look pretty bad on the seniors if the juniors didn't live up to their supposed potential.

You're right. Valeris was a shining example of...

er, what?

A terrible hairdo, smug attitude, disloyalty, dishonor, and a Vulcan who utterly failed her logic lessons.

I always felt that nuKirk and origKirk are 2 different characters - nuKirk is what a fatherless and unguided origKirk might have become - and part of the nuTrek storyline is how nuKirk uses the inherent "Kirk talent" to become the man he can be and the hero we all know.

Yeah. A lot of people don't seem to get that these movies are an extended origin story. The characters aren't different from the ones we know because they're out of character, but because they're younger and haven't yet grown into the people we know.

Uh-uh. We know they're not going to "grow into" the people we know. They can't, because their lives and circumstances are different. There's no way nuSpock can "grow into" Original Spock, because his mother is dead and he has a girlfriend instead of a prospective bondmate. It's not like Amanda ceased to matter to Original Spock the moment he joined Starfleet Academy. When it's nuSpock's time for pon farr, will nuUhura invoke a challenge instead of just marrying him? Probably not, which suggests that nuSpock will have a much more domestic life than Original Spock... unless the third movie decides nuT'Pring is still alive.

 

[chardman]

How did I get past NuKirk's rise to command?

Same way I got past the idea that three years of Academy schooling had occurred, entirely off-screen, and in a matter of minutes:

Easily.

Movies only last a couple of hours, and stuff needs to be condensed, or glossed over, simply to fit all of the story into such a brief format. By necessity, you reveal that which is necessary to the story, and don't bog things down by explaining details that you know your audience already understands and accepts.

We all knew that Kirk would be Captain. It was a given, and thus didn't require a lot of explanation to convince us of what we already knew and fully expected. Instead, the movie focused on conveying the elements of the story that we didn't already know. Which is entirely as it should be.

 

[Timo]

The proof of Kirk's capacity to command is that he proved not to be the clueless patsy Marcus was expecting him to be.

The writers hedged the bets there a bit, having McCoy complain about how Kirk isn't well and should be resting. Kirk wasn't just an angry young man, he was an angry young man who had banged his head badly, judging by McCoy's constant tricorder-tickling. Perhaps he got better en route from Earth to Qo'noS?

One wonders what other hothead Marcus could have had in mind. Also, it seems the Enterprise was already a major element in the plan: it would take time to arrange for the warp core sabotage, and the torpedo chutes might have been custom jobs, too, requiring even more lead time. Planting a suitably vegetative captain into the center pot of the Enterprise should also take some effort, so it really appears Marcus was acing on a long-term plan where Kirk commanding that ship was a setup from the get-go.

Who knows, perhaps Marcus also arranged for Kirk to be poisoned somehow for the mission? Perhaps he had spare Ceti Eels and slipped one in during the penthouse massacre? This would give him more leeway with the choice of the patsy...

...Although I still feel Kirk is such an unlikely Enterprise commander that this must have been a two-step plot where Marcus uses the unwitting Pike to get Kirk to do the dirty work. Which brings attention to the fact that Khan is a fantastic marksman, even with heavy weaponry. It should have been easy for him to selectively assassinate Pike and leave Kirk alive in the massacre, to effect the exact outcome that Marcus desired for his plot of sending the long range torpedoes to Klingon space. Lots of coincidences and implausibilities eliminated there:

- Getting those torps to the KNZ really, really requires Khan and Marcus to cooperate, up to a point. And of course they would, as Marcus is Khan's boss and Khan is his clever advisor. After that point, their respective betrayals of the other party would come into play, but until then, they would trust each other (that is, trust that the other is flying into the trap arranged by the other).

- Having Kirk command the Enterprise must be the result of incompetence or malice. Okay, so here it's malice!

- The mechanics of that malice are pretty clear, too: Kirk does what Pike says, and Pike does what Marcus says, for the exact same reasons. And carefully killing Pike is a very precise and reliable way of preparing Kirk for the job at hand.

Okay, enough coffee for today. But both the movies do appear to contain the rationales for the seemingly irrational bits: this is not how Starfleet normally works, but it is how the Starfleet we know could work in a crisis of this exact description.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Belz...]

One wonders what other hothead Marcus could have had in mind. Also, it seems the Enterprise was already a major element in the plan: it would take time to arrange for the warp core sabotage, and the torpedo chutes might have been custom jobs, too, requiring even more lead time.

Which could lead one to conclude that he wanted to send in Pike !

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Care to elaborate on which two films and why?

TFF and NEM. These two are in a special category of WTF for me.

for the life of me I can't understand how anybody can accept the way new Kirk got promoted

The same way I get past all the nonsense in all the other films*: chillax and just go with the flow.

* - except in two films**, when it just gets to be too much.

** - not the Abrams films.

In all honesty, I don't have as big a problem with stuff in the Abrams films as I do stuff in most other Trek films. My ranking of the Trek films goes:

TWOK
TMP
STXI
STID
all the rest
TFF
NEM

The Abrams films are an improvement to what I've had to swallow for years, and way more than the two bottom ones.

Could the Abrams films have been better? Sure. But the idea that the new films represent some new degree of awful just doesn't wash.

 

[siskokid888]

It should be remembered that "nepotism" of some sort is how Starfleet has always operated. In TOS, it was stated a couple of times that sponsorship by a serving officer was important in getting Kirk or some other hopeful into Starfleet in the first place; STXI showed Starfleet happening to Kirk thanks to Pike, ST:ID told this had happened to Pike thanks to Marcus.

How could it not follow that the mentors or godfathers of the young officers would favor and favoritize their proteges? It would look pretty bad on the seniors if the juniors didn't live up to their supposed potential.

You're right. Valeris was a shining example of...

er, what?

A terrible hairdo, smug attitude, disloyalty, dishonor, and a Vulcan who utterly failed her logic lessons.

I always felt that nuKirk and origKirk are 2 different characters - nuKirk is what a fatherless and unguided origKirk might have become - and part of the nuTrek storyline is how nuKirk uses the inherent "Kirk talent" to become the man he can be and the hero we all know.

Yeah. A lot of people don't seem to get that these movies are an extended origin story. The characters aren't different from the ones we know because they're out of character, but because they're younger and haven't yet grown into the people we know.

Uh-uh. We know they're not going to "grow into" the people we know. They can't, because their lives and circumstances are different. There's no way nuSpock can "grow into" Original Spock, because his mother is dead and he has a girlfriend instead of a prospective bondmate. It's not like Amanda ceased to matter to Original Spock the moment he joined Starfleet Academy. When it's nuSpock's time for pon farr, will nuUhura invoke a challenge instead of just marrying him? Probably not, which suggests that nuSpock will have a much more domestic life than Original Spock... unless the third movie decides nuT'Pring is still alive.

I agree with that. I didn't mean to imply that nu and origKirk will eventually be one and the same - they are 2 distinct characters (as are all the TOS and nucharacters) and will always be different. But there will be some similarities - think Spock and mirror-Spock from "Mirror Mirror" - polar opposites in general, but you could see one in the other. The idea of becoming is part of the nuTrek storyline, IMHO.

 

[Christopher]

Uh-uh. We know they're not going to "grow into" the people we know. They can't, because their lives and circumstances are different.

"Can't"? I'll never understand people who talk about works of fiction as if the writers had zero control over their outcome. The characters can turn out whatever way the writers want them to turn out. The writers may choose the interpretation that nature trumps nurture -- that no matter how their circumstances have changed, the characters still have the same basic essence. After all, why would they assume anything else? Audiences don't want to see strangers, they want to see the TOS characters they know and love.

Indeed, Orci has said outright that his view is that the timeline is, in a sense, trying to correct itself back toward its most probable path, hence the coincidence of all the characters ending up on the Enterprise together despite the circumstances being so different. So it stands to reason that ending up in the same roles and relationships will promote the same potentials in the characters that were fulfilled in the original timeline. Yes, there will be some differences in the specifics, but the core of who they are won't be that different.

There's no way nuSpock can "grow into" Original Spock, because his mother is dead and he has a girlfriend instead of a prospective bondmate. It's not like Amanda ceased to matter to Original Spock the moment he joined Starfleet Academy. When it's nuSpock's time for pon farr, will nuUhura invoke a challenge instead of just marrying him? Probably not, which suggests that nuSpock will have a much more domestic life than Original Spock... unless the third movie decides nuT'Pring is still alive.

Those are details, and they're not what I'm talking about. Of course the events will be different, but the point is that the fundamental personalities of the characters will be the same. Kirk will still end up as the disciplined, highly moral, intelligent commander he was originally, because his experiences will bring out that side of him and temper his youthful fire. And Spock will still end up as his true and loyal friend as their experiences strengthen their bonds.

 

[Commishsleer]

I always felt that nuKirk and origKirk are 2 different characters - nuKirk is what a fatherless and unguided origKirk might have become - and part of the nuTrek storyline is how nuKirk uses the inherent "Kirk talent" to become the man he can be and the hero we all know.

Yeah. A lot of people don't seem to get that these movies are an extended origin story. The characters aren't different from the ones we know because they're out of character, but because they're younger and haven't yet grown into the people we know.

Yeh I get that they're different after having a different childhood and they're younger.
I just don't see how Captain Kirk gets to be captain because he had a different childhood and didn't have 15 years of experience before he got the Captain's stripes. I'd even forgive this if I actually liked nuKirk. He still seems too much of a jerk to me. Please Orci make me like him in the next movie.

 

[Timewalker]

Uh-uh. We know they're not going to "grow into" the people we know. They can't, because their lives and circumstances are different.

"Can't"? I'll never understand people who talk about works of fiction as if the writers had zero control over their outcome. The characters can turn out whatever way the writers want them to turn out. The writers may choose the interpretation that nature trumps nurture -- that no matter how their circumstances have changed, the characters still have the same basic essence. After all, why would they assume anything else? Audiences don't want to see strangers, they want to see the TOS characters they know and love.

Of course a writer can write the characters any damn way he wants, and one writer's interpretation won't necessarily be the same as any other writer's. For example, you write Star Trek one way and other pro authors here write in other ways. You all use the same core group of characters and in-universe background, yet there are some authors' works that I really enjoy and others that I find uninteresting and have stopped reading.

The nuTrek characters are not "TOS characters (I) know and love." They are caricatures who I not only don't know or love, but that I really dislike, for the most part. I just can't see this bunch of largely-immature people serving on a starship at all, let alone being the command team in charge of the flagship.

Indeed, Orci has said outright that his view is that the timeline is, in a sense, trying to correct itself back toward its most probable path, hence the coincidence of all the characters ending up on the Enterprise together despite the circumstances being so different. So it stands to reason that ending up in the same roles and relationships will promote the same potentials in the characters that were fulfilled in the original timeline. Yes, there will be some differences in the specifics, but the core of who they are won't be that different.

I remember reading Killing Time, a 1985 Star Trek novel that used this theme of history being changed and the alternate history trying to reshape itself back to its original, correct form (yes, I know that novel is notorious for another reason; let's please not get sidetracked into that, as I prefer to look at it as a time travel/alt history story). So nuTrek is hardly breaking new ground with the "different but same" in an alternate history story.

There's no way nuSpock can "grow into" Original Spock, because his mother is dead and he has a girlfriend instead of a prospective bondmate. It's not like Amanda ceased to matter to Original Spock the moment he joined Starfleet Academy. When it's nuSpock's time for pon farr, will nuUhura invoke a challenge instead of just marrying him? Probably not, which suggests that nuSpock will have a much more domestic life than Original Spock... unless the third movie decides nuT'Pring is still alive.

Those are details, and they're not what I'm talking about. Of course the events will be different, but the point is that the fundamental personalities of the characters will be the same. Kirk will still end up as the disciplined, highly moral, intelligent commander he was originally, because his experiences will bring out that side of him and temper his youthful fire. And Spock will still end up as his true and loyal friend as their experiences strengthen their bonds.

Based on what we've seen in the first two movies, at what point will nuKirk become "the disciplined, highly moral, intelligent commander he was originally"... the fourth movie? The sixth? Maybe the tenth? Considering this nuTrek's preference for putting juvenile-minded people in command of a starship and saying "they'll grow into it," we could be in for a long stretch.

Whereas Original Star Trek had people serving on the Enterprise who were already grownups.

 

[urbandefault]

^^We saw a preview of Kirk becoming the captain we're familiar with at the end of STID.

 

[Joel_Kirk]

^^We saw a preview of Kirk becoming the captain we're familiar with at the end of STID.

I must have missed that preview.

 

[Timewalker]

^^We saw a preview of Kirk becoming the captain we're familiar with at the end of STID.

We should have seen that by the end of the first movie, at the very latest.

Even Original Kirk started out in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" as a responsible, grownup captain, not as some kid who has to "grow into" the position.

 

[Smellmet]

We seriously need awesome Kirk in the next movie not Jerk Kirk

 

[Ovation]

^^We saw a preview of Kirk becoming the captain we're familiar with at the end of STID.

We should have seen that by the end of the first movie, at the very latest.

Even Original Kirk started out in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" as a responsible, grownup captain, not as some kid who has to "grow into" the position.

The filmmakers were explicit about their desire to explore the decade or so before WNHGB. It's fine to prefer a different focus, it's also fine to critique how they went about it but one can hardly fault them for actually doing what they said they planned to do.

 

[urbandefault]

^^We saw a preview of Kirk becoming the captain we're familiar with at the end of STID.

We should have seen that by the end of the first movie, at the very latest.

Even Original Kirk started out in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" as a responsible, grownup captain, not as some kid who has to "grow into" the position.

Really.

In the 2nd pilot Kirk was older and had been in command far longer than the younger version we're seeing now. It's a different timeline, and each character has had a different experience growing up. It's Nero's fault, as has been explained and discussed to death for five years now.

Sometimes I think we aren't all seeing the same movies.

 

[fireproof78]

^^We saw a preview of Kirk becoming the captain we're familiar with at the end of STID.

We should have seen that by the end of the first movie, at the very latest.

Even Original Kirk started out in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" as a responsible, grownup captain, not as some kid who has to "grow into" the position.

Why?

I find nuKirk's character arc very interesting, and reflective of the times it was created it. There is a sense that Kirk feels like he could never live up to the expectations set up by his father and Pike, and as such, he overcompensates by being brash, impulsive and arrogant. nuKirk lacks a certain level of discipline that he is learning and growing while we watch, rather than it happening off screen.

I get that it isn't for everyone, but that makes it different, not bad.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

I just don't see how Captain Kirk gets to be captain because he had a different childhood and didn't have 15 years of experience before he got the Captain's stripes.

Meh, In Star Trek experience is overrated.

I mean how many other non-main character captains besides Robau didn't look like fools to make the main character captains look better.

 

[Timewalker]

^^We saw a preview of Kirk becoming the captain we're familiar with at the end of STID.

We should have seen that by the end of the first movie, at the very latest.

Even Original Kirk started out in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" as a responsible, grownup captain, not as some kid who has to "grow into" the position.

Really.

In the 2nd pilot Kirk was older and had been in command far longer than the younger version we're seeing now. It's a different timeline, and each character has had a different experience growing up. It's Nero's fault, as has been explained and discussed to death for five years now.

Sometimes I think we aren't all seeing the same movies.

Yes, really.

You don't hand starship duty, let alone command, to people who still need to grow up. These people are supposed to already be responsible adults and know how to behave professionally.

"It's Nero's fault" has nothing to do with the producer/writer's inability to make a Star Trek movie that makes sense. It's not Nero's fault that nuKirk is such an unlikeable idiot, or that nuUhura doesn't know how to keep her boyfriend problems off-duty. It's the fault of the people who made the movie.

And yes, we are all seeing the same movies (unless the versions I saw on the Space Channel and my local cable company's On Demand service were somehow different from the versions shown in the theatres and currently on Netflix). We are just having a difference of opinion, based on differing interpretations.

^^We saw a preview of Kirk becoming the captain we're familiar with at the end of STID.

We should have seen that by the end of the first movie, at the very latest.

Even Original Kirk started out in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" as a responsible, grownup captain, not as some kid who has to "grow into" the position.

Why?

I find nuKirk's character arc very interesting, and reflective of the times it was created it. There is a sense that Kirk feels like he could never live up to the expectations set up by his father and Pike, and as such, he overcompensates by being brash, impulsive and arrogant. nuKirk lacks a certain level of discipline that he is learning and growing while we watch, rather than it happening off screen.

I get that it isn't for everyone, but that makes it different, not bad.

The vast majority of nuKirk's time at Starfleet Academy happened offscreen. I didn't get the impression of a mature officer when he first boarded the Enterprise; I got the impression of a smart-alecky jerk who thought he was really something but it turns out he wasn't... even well into the second movie, by which time any normal Starfleet officer should have grown out of such juvenile nonsense.

 

[fireproof78]

We should have seen that by the end of the first movie, at the very latest.

Even Original Kirk started out in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" as a responsible, grownup captain, not as some kid who has to "grow into" the position.

Really.

In the 2nd pilot Kirk was older and had been in command far longer than the younger version we're seeing now. It's a different timeline, and each character has had a different experience growing up. It's Nero's fault, as has been explained and discussed to death for five years now.

Sometimes I think we aren't all seeing the same movies.

Yes, really.

You don't hand starship duty, let alone command, to people who still need to grow up. These people are supposed to already be responsible adults and know how to behave professionally.

"It's Nero's fault" has nothing to do with the producer/writer's inability to make a Star Trek movie that makes sense. It's not Nero's fault that nuKirk is such an unlikeable idiot, or that nuUhura doesn't know how to keep her boyfriend problems off-duty. It's the fault of the people who made the movie.

And yes, we are all seeing the same movies (unless the versions I saw on the Space Channel and my local cable company's On Demand service were somehow different from the versions shown in the theatres and currently on Netflix). We are just having a difference of opinion, based on differing interpretations.

We should have seen that by the end of the first movie, at the very latest.

Even Original Kirk started out in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" as a responsible, grownup captain, not as some kid who has to "grow into" the position.

Why?

I find nuKirk's character arc very interesting, and reflective of the times it was created it. There is a sense that Kirk feels like he could never live up to the expectations set up by his father and Pike, and as such, he overcompensates by being brash, impulsive and arrogant. nuKirk lacks a certain level of discipline that he is learning and growing while we watch, rather than it happening off screen.

I get that it isn't for everyone, but that makes it different, not bad.

The vast majority of nuKirk's time at Starfleet Academy happened offscreen. I didn't get the impression of a mature officer when he first boarded the Enterprise; I got the impression of a smart-alecky jerk who thought he was really something but it turns out he wasn't... even well into the second movie, by which time any normal Starfleet officer should have grown out of such juvenile nonsense.

I'll agree to a difference of interpretation, because I don't see it as juvenile nonsense, as you put it. I think that he is cocky, arrogant, and brilliant, who had an easy time at everything prior to being a captain. Now, he is forced to deal with problems that he has no answers for, and it makes him grow or die trying. I think he has a lot more flaws that are visible due to the lack of polish, but there is a change to him.

I personally would have prefer more of his Academy days, and his training, rather than the 3 year later that we got, but that doesn't mean I dislike Kirk. I find him to be a bit more of a dynamic character, someone who is carrying around a lot of hurt and pain, and that is fascinating to me.

As per everything else, YMMV

 

[DonIago]

I love it when people cite the "unprofessionalism" in the new movies, as though Our Heroes' behavior in TOS was always the epitome of professional conduct.

Can't tell whether Selective Amnesia or Glossing Over.